Please learn more about the upcoming courses. In this post I will explore immediate knowing in contrast to conceptual knowing.

Knowing is an interesting topic. In our usual everyday life, knowing means the accumulation of knowledge, experience, and remembering what we know. Knowing is usually conceptual. There is a separation between the knower and the known.

Knowing is through representations and not immediate and direct. Knowing through memory is a helpful part of learning and living, but it is limiting in that it does not reveal the deeper questions and let's us miss the directness of inner contact we can have.

Knowing Through Memory

knowing through representation of sensory experience
reflectively and conceptually
the accumulation of information
conclusions, beliefs

Knowing Through Immediate Awareness

knowing through directly being in touch with yourself
consciousness knowing itself through directness
immediate contact and knowing

The less identification with experience we have, the more we are knowing directly, what and who we are beyond conceptual forms and ideas. When we identify with our mental and emotional structures, the experience of unity between the knower and the known disappears and we experience a separate 'me' relating to an object of experience.

Knowing or direct knowing is being in touch with your own consciousness in a way that it is suffused with whatever is currently occurring. It is a complete 'yes' to whatever is unfolding in this moment.

The more open we become to our experience, the more we can recognize that consciousness is the one that perceives and the perceived simultaneously.

The more we know ourselves immediately, without representations, the less we are bound by our experience and trapped by thoughts, feelings and emotions.